Cheaper Tires

Restrictions on the use of rubber will be "largely eliminated" after Jan. 1, the National Production Authority announced last week. This will be the first lifting of controls on a major raw material since the start of the Korean war. NPA will continue its ban on white sidewall tires (to save natural rubber and titanium-dioxide pigments), and inventories of synthetic will be policed to prevent hoarding. But U.S. manufacturers will get all the synthetic rubber they need, and once again will be allowed to import natural liquid rubber.

The turnabout in rubber is the result of increased synthetic production and lower prices on crude rubber. When the Korean war sent the price of natural rubber skyrocketing from 43-c- to 80-c- a pound in Singapore, Jess Larson's General Services Administration took over all rubber importing. It beat down prices (47-c- last week) by restricting buying, put government-owned synthetic plants back in production, stepped up output to more than 760,000 tons for 1951, a rise of 87% in the past two years. With controls lifted, tiremakers last week confidently announced that they would soon be able to sell "second-line" tires for $5 to $6 less than the "first-line" tires which they have been making exclusively since rubber controls started.

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